Various techniques have been employed to air lay fibrous cellulosic material to form a fibrous web that can be employed to produce an absorbent pad for an absorbent article, such as a disposable diaper or the like. Other techniques have been employed to air lay mixtures of hydrophilic cellulosic fibers and superabsorbent particles. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,610,678 entitled HIGH-DENSITY ABSORBENT STRUCTURES and issued Sep. 9, 1986 to Weisman et al.
Particular techniques have been employed to form selected regions of superabsorbent material intermittently located along the length of a web of absorbent fibers. For example, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,028,224 entitled METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR INTERMITTENTLY DEPOSITING PARTICULATE MATERIAL IN A SUBSTRATE AND ARTICLE MADE THEREWITH, issued Jul. 2, 1991 to C. Pieper et al. (Docket No. 8761). Also, see U.S. Pat. No. 5,017,324 issued May 21, 1991 to Kaiser et al.
Absorbent structures have also been provided with discrete separated regions or pockets of superabsorbent material. Examples of such structures are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,055,181 issued Oct. 25, 1977, to H. Karami; U.S. Pat. No. 4,360,021 issued Nov. 23, 1982, to J. Stima and U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,918 issued to Lang.
Conventional techniques, such as those described above, have not provided an adequate mechanism for producing discrete pockets of particulate, high absorbency material on a moving carrier web at desired high rates of manufacture. The techniques have not been able to operate at sufficiently high speeds, and have not been sufficiently able to reliably produce desired arrays composed of pocket regions arranged in predetermined patterns.